Attack Of The Turbo Tibbles
2019 February 24 1999 VHS # 2019 February 24 # Rainy Days # Arthur's Almost Boring Day # Go Fly a Kite # Best Day Ever Synopsis by KorraIsBack Arthur's talking about the Tibble Twins. They have awesome capabilities when it comes to annoying people. ;Timmy can yell for five minutes straight... ;Timmy's standing in front of a multicoloured splotchy background. He starts screaming. ;Timmy:Yahhh! Yahhh! : ;Then his head morphs into a turbine jet engine and he does one long turbine-like howl. ;Timmy:YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;Tommy's like four kids. ;Tommy's standing on a similar background. We see three slightly transparent clones of him split off so that he's now four kids. They all start running around in a circle yelling and shouting. The Tibbles are annoying. But Arthur concludes it could be worse -- what if they had super powers? * * * Attack of the Turbo Tibbles * * * Fairly typical afternoon at the Reads. Arthur wants to get his homework done early, so he can watch "Secrets of Magic" on TV. However, in the living room, the Tibbles are over playing with D.W.. The Tibbles are making too much noise screaming for Arthur to concentrate on his homework. D.W.'s not having much fun tolerating them either. Arthur suggests they put on a video. A video's selected and the Tibbles and D.W. sit down to watch it. It's a Mary Moo Cow video, on the topic of "feet". This captivating educational video features a long montage of lots of images of feet: human feet, animal feet, etc. While we see the feet images, the viewer is subjected to feet-related music: Your heels would roll around inside your shoes / If you didn't have feet to attach them too. & a little later, (To the tune of either'' Beethoven's Fifth'', or based on a vein from "The Barber of Seville"...) Feet, Feet, Feet, Feet, FEEET... As KorraIsBack comments that was from “The Barber of Seville”. Sometimes it’s kind of a “CARMEN”-esque vein. The Tibbles appear to really like the feet video. They had no idea that feet were so interesting. Just then, something goes wrong, and the video stops. Uh oh. What to do now? The Tibbles say that they can fix a VCR... Tommy: We know how to take a VCR apart.Timmy: We do? Tommy smiles at him. Timmy (as it dawns on him...): Yeah. We'll fix it. The Tibbles get up and D.W., thinking of the well-being of the VCR, says they'll just watch something on TV instead. The Tibbles abandon any thought of disemboweling the VCR and sit back down. They flick through the channels. *The Tibbles don't want to watch "Pumpkins in Pants"... it's for babies. *There's a show featuring "Huckle Bat" and his sidekick... The Tibbles don't want to watch this either. They claim it's "too busy", and "not scary". They keep looking for something to watch. The Tibbles find a show they immediately like -- "Terrific Turbo-Trooper Toy T-Bot Team"... It's a fast-paced show full of action showing the amazing heroic adventures of the T-Bots, crime-fighting robots who dispense justice to bad guys: evil gangster whale people, squid and lobster aliens etc. Buildings get smashed, there's flashing colours, loud music, and lots of fighting. It's noisy and violent and the Tibbles love it. They've never seen this show before apparently. D.W. isn't pleased. She gets Mom to come in. The T-Bot show is banned in the Read's house. Timmy: Tommy made me watch it! * * * The show has had it's effect on the Tibbles though. Next day in pre-school, the Tibble twins are walking around dressed up in cardboard boxes, all decked out as T-Bot robots... They have cardboard box helmets with grills on the front that can open and close like old fashioned potstoves. *''Tommy's "T-Bot Emerald". His costume has green markings.'' *''Timmy's "T-Bot Crimson". He's got red markings.'' Tommy and Timmy, as the T-Bots jump around, acting out the show during playtime. They declare that T-Bots "always triumph", and they are on the lookout for crime. They detect the following crimes: *''Emily's coloring outside the lines in a coloring book.'' *''Then during a class sing-along of the alphabet song, still dressed as the T-Bots, Timmy and Tommy accuse D.W. of slurring letters together during the song. They say she slurred "L,M,N,L,P" together... or was it "L,M,N,R,P"? It doesn't really matter to them though; they're about to dispense justice to D.W. the way T-Bots do it. (By thumping her)'' Ms. Morgan sees this and tells Tommy and Timmy to take a time out. As she does this, she makes a "T" with her hands. The Tibbles comply, but only because of the "T" hand signal. They're still deep into pretending to be the T-Bots. By coincidence, this just happens to be their secret sign. Tibbles: She is one of us! Command received! It appears that giving the "T" hand signal stops (deactivates?) the T-Bots and no further "justice" will be dispensed at present. (Lucky for D.W.) Tommy and Timmy sit down and behave... for the time being. * * * The T-Bot show may be banned at the Read's house, but at Grandma Tibble's house, the Tibbles can watch whatever they like, and watch lots of T-Bots. The walking whale-people gangsters are counting their ill-gotten gains in their base; the T-Bots shoot their heads through the wall, demolishing it. Bad guy shark gangsters: Iyieyie! One of the T-Bots pauses before beating up the bad guys to tell the viewers something important. T-Bot: Remember kids, Don't try this at home. In their living room, the Tibbles are on the edge of their seats, following the action intently. Tibbles: Good one! Back to the show... The T-Bots then proceed to take care of the bad guys in a big fight -- stuff gets smashed, the bad guys get picked up and thrown, etc., etc. * * * The Tibbles can't pull their own heads off, but they can shout and jump around. Emily and D.W. bear the brunt of the Tibbles "T-Bot" games, since that's all the Tibbles want to do when they play together; they never drop the act, and D.W. and Emily always have to be the bad guys. D.W. says she's sick of the Tibbles being "Terrible Tuba Toofers" or whatever they're called. Emily agrees. * * * At home, D.W. blames Arthur for the Tibbles acting the way they are, D.W. claims that had it not been for Arthur's original suggestion; they wouldn't have watched the video, the Tibbles would never have ended up seeing that show, and they wouldn't be jumping around all the time playing "Terminal Tire Tube Team"... Arthur tells her she should just tell the Tibbles to just cut it out. D.W. thinks this should work... * * * D.W. tells Emily of her plan to tell the Tibbles to stop their fooling around. Emily: Good idea -- Did your Mom tell you that? D.W. thinks for a second... she doesn't want to give Arthur credit for a good idea. D.W.: Yah. * * * Emily, D.W., and the Tibbles are in Grandma Tibble's backyard. The Tibbles are still dressed as the T-Bots, and are still pretending to be them. When they see D.W. and Emily, the Tibbles imagine them to be alien shark-lobster alien bad-guys out of the show. D.W.: We have to talk. Tibbles: Surrender, we always win. D.W. and Emily want the Tibbles to stop pretending for a minute so they can talk sense to them, but the Tibbles refuse to give it a rest, even for a second, and start chasing them around the yard. The girls have to clamber around the toys and the swing set in the garden to get away from the mad Tibbles who want to dispense justice. D.W. stands in front of a wooden bench swing for a second. Timmy, as T-Bot Crimson says he's going to give her "a blast from his rocket gloves". He pulls the swing back and lets it swing forward. The seat of the swing hits D.W. in the mouth and she goes down on the ground bleeding. It's a panic situation. D.W.'s hurt and on the ground crying. Emily runs off to look for help, and the Tibbles run away. * * * They run into the garage and stand by the wall near the front of the garage. (By the vertical rails for the roll-up door.) Tommy wants to keep the game going; he says that something's wrong with their communication equipment. Timmy tells Tommy to quit it -- he doesn't want to play anymore. This is serious. Both of them are worried all of a sudden. They don't know what will happen to D.W.. Could she die from being hit in the mouth? They don't know! The garage door rolls up, Grandma Tibble is there. Timmy: I knew we should have hid against the back wall. * * * D.W.'s taken to the hospital by her parents, and gets 8 stitches in her mouth to close up the gash in her lip from the swing. After D.W. gets fixed up, The Tibbles with Grandma Tibble in tow come in to see D.W. in her room in the hospital. The Tibbles are near tears with worry over D.W.'s well-being. They hug her and say they're really sorry for what happened. D.W. by now is calm and collected. She wryly notes that the Tibbles are crying more than she is, and she's the one who got the stitches! The Tibbles are relieved that D.W. hasn't died. They say they're sorry about hurting her; they had no idea -- nobody on the show ever got hurt... D.W. says that's because it's not real. The Tibbles say that from now on, they'll only watch real things on TV. D.W.'s about to leave the hospital with her parents and they start to walk out the entrance and on home. As they do, the Tibbles follow her; they want D.W. to come over and watch "real" things on TV with them. Tibbles: Wrestling! D.W. says no. Tibbles: Football. D.W. says no again, and keeps walking. The Tibbles ramble on about those things being real. D.W. just keeps saying no. D.W. walks home from the hospital with Mom and Dad as the sun sets. End. The Terrific Turbo Trooper Toy-T Bot Team! No points for guessing that the "Terrific Turbo T-Bot Team" is a parody of "Power Rangers Samurai"... Iyieyie! Given the fact that there are now worse things on TV than Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, this is an episode which is going to become "dated" pretty soon... the message still rings true though, I guess. First off, the obvious "Pumpkins in Pants" is a parody of "Bananas in Pajamas" which is a show for young kids about two anthropomorphic talking bananas, B1 and B2, who have adventures with their teddy bear friends and Rat, who's naughty. It is for little kids. The Richard Scarry parody the Twins reject while channel-surfing hits close to home. "The Busy World of Richard Scarry" was, as pointed out, made by the same people, and the same studio, Cinar. Nickelodeon shows it on weekday mornings, and even though it was made a few years before ARTHUR, and for a somewhat younger audience, there are similarities. Many of the same names appear in the credits of both shows, and the distinctive title cards, with the shows' characters engaging in little bits of 'business'. It's strange that Cinar would make fun of one of its shows on another of its shows. "Turbo Tibbles" was okay actually -- quite amusing :) The Tibbles' antics don't annoy me quite as much as they might do others. And I think the fact that it's possible for people to get hurt in Arthur makes this one an interesting watch -- and kind of puts Arthur above other cartoons... However, I wouldn't have thought that Miss Morgan would have allowed the twins to sit around in class kitted out like that. Arthur characters can get hurt; Arthur already hurt himself in [http://www.angelfire.com/ma2/ecdc/21402.htm #21402 - "Arthur's Knee"], and D.W. gets punched again by her brother [http://www.angelfire.com/ma2/ecdc/40102.htm #40102 - "Arthur's Big Hit"].